American Lit Context Flashcards
What laws were enforced in America from the late 19th century that enforced racial discrimination?
Jim Crow Laws
In what year was the Chinese Exclusion Act signed?
1882
What was published in 1918?
My Antonia
What was the American stance at the start of WW1 and why?
neutral - nation made up of many different immigrants, no obvious choice
When was the Gilded Age - focus on monopoly capitalism?
late 19th century - Gilded age literature set out to expose the futility of American waste
What was nordicism?
a form of white supremacy that favoured immigrants of northern descent in American eg) Tom Buchanan - The Rise of the Coloured Empires
When did the 19th amendment (female emancipation) pass?
1920
When was the American Civil War?
1861-65
Why do some critics argue prohibition was passed?
as a form of xenophobia - to exclude immigrants who drank alcohol
also to combat domestic violence - Myrtle and Tom
What characterised American Literature following the enlightenment?
shift from God centred thought to man centred thought
Quotes from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography about the virtues of a true American
"”dressed plainly”… “moderation” - Contrast to Gatsby’s “gaudy” lifestyle
satirical as “imitate Jesus and Socrates”
Quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lecture ‘ The American Scholar’ that links to The American Dream
“that gleam of light that flashes across the mind from within’
Ecoliterature
explores mans relationship with the land
What characterises Regional Realism?
colloquial dialects, difficult moral predicaments
What did Mark Twain publish that attacked American Romanticism and The Southern Myth?
‘Fenimoore Coopers Literary Offenses’
short story my Kate Chopin highlighting racial tension in Southern America?
‘Desiree’s Baby’ 1893
Modello’s American Dream
Bases the American dream on the prospect of monetary wealth and opulence
Hollywood’s not called a dream factory for nothing. It manufactures optimism, and in the process of selling it, can make the possibility of success feel wondrously real.
Truslow Adams in his 1931 book ‘The Epic of America’
“that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
The Cactus - O Henry 1882
lies about speaking spanish - unusual as the female is intellectually superior
Characterised Gilded Age Literature
‘fluttered like a snared bird’
‘one thousand well bred voices’
The Killers - Ernest Hemingway
the lunchroom story
vaudeville act
Realism
1855-1900
exposes the prevalence of class in American Literature
objective narrator
aims to highlight specific social problems
Naturalism
1880-1900
brutality and violence
tragic
pits man against nature
Modernism
1900-1946
alienation/disconnection
unique - stream of consciousness, fragmented
Harlem Renaissance
1920s
African American life
allusions to African spirituals
Agrarianism
rural>urban economy (Jeffersonian economy)
Grapes - consequences of Hamiltonian capitalism and rural economic failure
Gatsby - consequence of urban economy and conspicuous consumption
Social Stratification
protagonists are grouped based on socioeconomic status
Humanism
value of human beings
Pragmatism
success of implementation of ideas –> Gatsby’s implementation of corrupt monetary ideals is a failure
